Almost Fall, again

It’s just the beginning of September, but fall is definitely in the air.

The asters are just starting to bloom. I’d picked up two fancy ones earlier this year, and I’m quite pleased with the dark purple and dark blue colors. I’m not so sure I liked where I planted them, but I want to give them a season to get established before I move them.

We’re not sure where this dahlia came from, so we are calling it our ‘volunteer’ dahlia. We think the Jollies sent us this plant in a tray of yellow coneflowers. The other choice is that a seed actually overwintered. It looks a lot like some of the ones I had last year, but it’s about four feet from where I’d had them planted.

We enjoyed the display that the stargazer lilies had put on earlier this year, and we want to make sure those bulbs get lots of stuff to stay happy and healthy again next year. So we screened some of the compost and started spreading it around.

That turned out to be a lot more work than we’d hoped, but we need to get a better screening system set up. Frank had built a frame with chicken wire that fit over the lawn tractor trailer, but it wasn’t really sturdy enough, and the compost wasn’t quite ready. We needed it out working in the garden, though, so we spread it out anyway.